


We Hold Our Own Hearts In Our Hands

by farfarawaygirl



Category: Daredevil (TV), Karen Page - Fandom, MCU, The Punisher (TV 2017), The Punisher - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:07:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22111564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farfarawaygirl/pseuds/farfarawaygirl
Summary: Karen Page is no stranger to trouble.Takes place after Season 1 of The Punisher.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Comments: 1
Kudos: 46





	We Hold Our Own Hearts In Our Hands

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t get this idea out of my mind. It’s been years.

Karen finally gets back to her building just before the sun rises. The detective at the precinct gave her a pair of disposable flip flops that do nothing to deter the rain and do even less for her chipped toenails. Brett had a uniform drive her home, he looks about twelve and she has to shoo him away at the front door to the building, as the elevator doors close she can see him still watching her before the reflection of herself in a pair of Brett’s workout clothes fill her vision. 

It’s been a hell of a day. 

Her purse is in evidence, so her keys and wallet are held in a clear evidence bag. Karen would be alarmed that this keeps on happening, but it more annoying. She loved that purse. 

Thankfully the lock doesn’t give her much trouble, when she moved (practically a pass time for her at this point) she picked this apartment for the space, storage and locks. Lots and lots of locks. Her elderly landlord, Mario, had assured her that this was a safe place. Karen feels like laughing, there are no such things as safe places. Not in Hell’s Kitchen, not since Matt died. Not since Frank disappeared the last time. It’s late April, the last time she saw him alive it was November. 

She flicks on the foyer light and there he is. All black, no skull. Combat boots and a black pea coat. Alive and breathing, not even a black eye. 

Karen just wants to cry. Wants to sit down on the hardwood and ugly sob for about a week. Instead she leans against the door, feels the day all the way to her bones and says, “you cook breakfast, I’m taking a bath.”

Frank still hasn’t said a word, just looked at her with those big brown eyes, she brushes past him on her way to the bathroom, and the back of his hand ghosts along hers. It’s a heartbeat, a solitary second, and she feels the heat of it all the way to her toes, burning up to her ears, warming her back, solid and present and real. He watches her, waits until the water runs to move towards the kitchen. She turns the water on as hot as it goes, dumps in a capful of bubble bath and strips naked all without closing the door. 

There is a weird sort of comfort in knowing he is only ten feet away. 

It only takes about five minutes before she calls his name. Hesitant, quietly, and then again, louder. 

“Frank?”

He’s there before she has to do it a third time, eyes trained on the ceiling light, hands in his pockets, dish towel tossed over a shoulder. She is sitting in the bath, knees pulled to her chest, head resting on her hands. 

He grunts. She can tell it is meant to be a question. 

It is momentary cause for concern that she can read his grunts so well. 

“There is glass in my hair.” 

He steps closer, into the bathroom, boots stark against the pale blue of her tile, and bends over her, inspecting. Karen has her eye closed, perfectly comfortable waiting for him to make an action. Confident in his gentlemanly manners. 

“Medical kit?” 

Karen hums, “under the sink.” 

She peaks out from under the curtain of her hair, stained with someone else’s blood and watches him, he opens the kit, spreads it out over her counter, steps out of the bathroom and returns with a clean dish towel. Methodical, that is how she would describe him, he sits on the edge of the tub, dish cloth spread over the toilet seat and a pair of tweezers in his hand. Warmth spreads over her as he moves her neck with his hand, tilts it this way and that as he pulls glass from her golden strands. He is gentle when the glass is embedded in her scalp, hums sympathetically when he applies the hydrogen peroxide. Without asking he knows to wash her hair. Shampoos the blood out twice and uses his hands as cups so she doesn’t have to move. Karen doesn’t know how long it take, but the warm water is long gone cold and stained a garish pink colour when he mutters “finished.” 

Karen stands without thinking about it, too tired, to cold, too... much, to care about her nakedness. The inch or two of the tub makes her half a head taller than him, but his eyes stay on her face, soft and warm as he wraps a towel around her. He’s tucking the end into her back when she moves, wraps her arms tight around him. Feels the water leech off her skin and into his clothes. 

“Karen.”

It’s just her name, but it speaks volumes. 

“Frank.”

He half lifts, half pulls her over the lip of the tub, rubs large circles across her back, guides her gently out of the bathroom and down the hall to her bedroom. Each creak and shift of the floorboards makes Karen want to giggle, but he is so solid in her arms, so real. 

The compulsion to cry is back. 

It’s takes her all of thirty seconds to put together that he has her floor plan mapped out in his head. He knows where she keeps things. Top drawer for an old Columbia sweatshirt of Foggy’s, bottom for the yoga pants she sleeps in, her dressed her with the towel still on, so when he is done she is sitting there with a sweater over it, and pants under it, wet hair still under the fraying collar. 

“Come on, ma’am,” Frank coax’s his voice close to her ear, “stand up.”

She obeys, leans her weight against him, closes her eyes as he eases the towel out from under her sweater. Foggy’s sweater. That seems important. Foggy gave it to her, a lifetime ago, long before she ever heard the name Frank Castle. 

“Before.” 

Her lips catch on his hair, and Karen is distantly aware of his fingers tightening in her hips. Before she knows what is happening he has slid his arm behind her knees and scooped her up. Frank has pulled back the comforter, and places her down, wraps her up, sits beside her and pushes he wet hair off her face. 

“Go to sleep,” Karen hears his start to move, and grabs onto his hand. “I’m here Karen. I’ll be here when you wake up. Get some sleep.”

“Don’t disappear on my me again, Castle, I can’t lose anyone else.”

The feeling of his thumb drawing circles on her palm is the last thing Karen remembers. 

A passing ambulance wakes her up just before noon, she is alone in her room, and wonders if she dreamed it all. But her hair smells like her shampoo, and she remembers how’s his hands felt on the base of her skull as he rubbed her neck. She didn’t dream that. That was real. Before she can really get out of bed, she’s basically just trying to will herself standing, Frank is filling up the doorway. Gunpowder and leather. His smell fills her nose. 

“You’re here.”

Frank nods.

That pesky need to cry is back, Karen swallows it down, rubs her face with her hands, slings her legs over the side of the bed and stands. Frank stays in the door way, leans against the frame, brow furrowed and mouth in a straight line. Karen pops her backs, and steps towards him, presses against him. Dips her nose into the space below his ear, wraps her arms around him. Holds on. 

Seconds pass and then Frank is meeting her, watch biting into the tender flesh of her back, and day old stubble scratching her forehead. Up close he smells more like sandalwood than gunpowder. 

“Hungry?” He barely says the words before her stomach rumbles between them.

Wordlessly they move from her room, she has her arm tucked into the crook of his elbow. They pass her galley kitchen on the way to her living room, and she can tell he has been at work. Egg shells and mixing bowls. He made muffins. Frank Castle, man of hidden depths. 

He serves her lukewarm coffee and buttered muffins, and they talk about inconsequential things; baseball season, the latest mayoral race and how she likes her her apartment. When the last sip is taken Karen watches Frank physical brace himself. 

“Where have you been?”

There is a lot of weight to that question, Frank hears the questions that is encompasses, “why didn’t you let me know you were alive?” “Why did you stay away?”

The answers aren’t easy. In fact Frank may not have them. It’s a complicated issue, they are complicated people and maybe he waited to long to come back because he was scared of what coming back would mean. 

“I’ve got a job, construction. Got an apartment. Not as nice as this one. Got a new name, too.” 

Karen quirks a brow, but let’s him do the talking.

“I’ve been going to group. Talking about what happened in the sandbox.” The silence stretches between them, “and about what happened when I got home. About Maria.”

Maria’s name is soft on his lips. Low and tender. It makes Karen feel an incredible softness for him. A tenderness that surprises her in its intensity. 

“Lisa. Frank Jr.” 

Karen feels a single tear slip down her cheek, Frank watches it fall. She remembers a animal first aid course she took in her Girl Scout days, wait until the animal stop struggling. You’ll be uncomfortable, but then they let you help, so she applies this now. Waits him out. Bits her lip, and stay silent. 

It works. 

He talks for nearly two hour straight. Starts and stops, retells things, clarifies statement, fills in the gaps for the pieces she already knows. David. Madani. What happened in Kandahar. What he did there; what that in turn did to him. Talks about waking up but hospital. The funerals. Curtis. The way that day never died, but lives in his head, over and over and over and over and over again. Agent Orange. 

Billy Russo. The blacksmith. 

He talks about what he did that first time he left New York. And getting clean slate from Homeland. His new name, Peter Castiglione. 

He tells her about Leo and Zach. How he watched her move from her old place to this one, and saw her leave the empty flower pot behind. How one time he followed her all the way to the meatpacking district while she tracked down a lead, and how she nearly lost him twice because she was using evasive tactics. He sounds almost pleased with that, a bit of pride mixed in the grumble of his voice. 

How last night David woke him up, calling to tell him Karen’s name was all over the Police Scanner. That she had been attacked, and how he could hardly wait for her here in the dark, hands useless and heavy and unaccustomed to such idleness. 

There is a lot that he doesn’t say, but that she feels; about an after and a maybe. 

When he finally gets quiet she feels it’s his turn, to be silent and get answers. 

“I was attacked last night by the same guy that killed my brother.”

It is stark and cold as soon as she says it. Just floating between them, the thirteen words suspended between them on a a bubble. Frank is a man of action, give him a problem and he find a tactile solution, but in this moment he is a man who listens. 

He hears her talk about her brother, is short practiced sentences. Describing his goodness and gentleness, and then how he died. Holding her hand in the darkness of a Vermont night.


End file.
